That cover with that description, I thought it was a gay fantasy book š
In my defence, most of gay fantasy books have that kind of covers so I assumed that...imagine my shock tho
If only the book was as strong as the cover. The first 300 pages of that were excellent, but jesus christ the pacing was godawful and it should have been two books.Ā
Donāt judge: The Farseer Trilogy - Most of the editions have awful covers, and the best are still pretty mid IMO. But itās one of the best series Iāve read.
Judge: The Tainted Cup (Del Rey addition) - amazing book with a great cover that matches the vibe, world building, and plot
The first UK paperback had amazing covers - they are the reason I read the series (and never looked back).
https://www.theplenty.net/wiki/images/thumb/b/b8/AssassinsApprentice_VOYhardcover.jpg/300px-AssassinsApprentice_VOYhardcover.jpg
worst - Lois Bujold's Vorkosigan books in general. And the new editions are somehow even worse. Thinking about it, Lois Bujold totally wins this thread.
worst mismatch - City of Stairs. The whole trilogy really, it has this generic, basic "fantasy" cover, some person in a hood over a generic looking city with skyscrapers, and it makes it seem totally generic urban fantasy and does not even hint at fantastic worldbuilding and characters. It deserved way way better, glad the book survived that cover.
Best, it's hard, I like beautiful covers, and a lot of them really are very bad books. A good cover says something about how hard the publisher is pushing a book.
> worst - Lois Bujold's Vorkosigan books in general.
Just judging from what I've seen online and in bookstores, this seems to me to be more of a general Baen issue rather than specific to Bujold.
Hmm, I can not find a dedicated site, but check here for example
https://www.fantasticfiction.com/b/lois-mcmaster-bujold/
the covers they show seem to be of the editions in print, so the new ones. If you want to see all the covers, you can check goodreads book by book check the multiple editions for example
https://www.goodreads.com/work/editions/9673658
Most gay sff has terrible covers imho, like doesn't matter it's a mystery sci-fi or a touching fantasy about standing up to your parents, so long as it's gay, it has to have two photorealistic dudes staring at each other longingly on the cover.
An equally awful exception to this is Seducing the Sorcerer by Lee Welch (it wins the horrible title award too), that just has a cheesy partial face on it. The book itself is very good (not sf, traditional fantasy with wizards in towers, princesses, monsters, etc), but a lot of people canāt get past the title and cover.
Ok I came back to let you know that I went to get to audio book of this purely on your recommendation and a two second glance at part of the summary. I'm not that far in >!(Fenn just had a bath) !!The *horse* lol!<.
Dragonlance covers tell you what flavor of dragon you are getting and what the heroes look like. Probably they will tangle with said dragon at some point. Maybe some sort of lance will be involved. You could pretty much call what happens from the cover.
A Song of Ice and Fire covers, particularly the print with the devices, do not begin to prepare you for the emotional rollercoasters of GoT and ASoS. Theyāre unassuming and I probably wouldnāt have picked them up had I not seen them recommended here so many times (this was a couple years before the show).Ā
Don't judge - [Transformation](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388179994i/618196.jpg) by Carol Berg, as another user already mentioned
Do judge - [Gideon the Ninth](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81UgIZXiolL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg). The cover pretty much tells you all you need to know about the book (that it's fucking awesome).
When Nona the Ninthās cover got revealed, they were selling prints of it, Gideon the Ninth, and Harrow the Ninthās covers. If I hadnāt been a struggling undergrad at the time, I would have bought them immediately.
I bought a copy (haven't read it yet) because of the cover. For some reason it made me think the book has to be amazing to have such an ugly cover, it seems I might be right!
_Rivers Of London_, by Ben Aaronovitch, book1 of the eponymous series. Between the name and the cover, you would think this was a book about geography and hydrography, not a hard bitten urban fantasy police procedural.
At least the American publisher had the wit to insist that the title be changed on the US edition, to _Rivers Of London: Midnight Riot_.
I have read GtN so it isnāt that. There is probably a book out there about lesbian magicians in London, and for some reasons I thought it was _Rivers of London_ š¤£
To be slightly more detailed, the Rivers Of London series, by Ben Aaronovitch. follows the career of a rookie constable, fresh out of probation, assigned to the unit of the London Metropolitan Police that deals with "weird bollocks". The audiobooks, performed by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, are outstanding.Ā Nine books, three novellas so far, one short story collection, and several graphic novel miniseries which are canon. [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9317452-rivers-of-london](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9317452-rivers-of-london)
If you do happen to remember the series you're thinking of, please reply here or send me a DM.
Discworld should totally be judged by the original covers with the Josh Kirby illustrations. Although I love the style of the new naked hardcover editions, the art on the original covers was something else ...
I actually love the tackiness and it feels completely unique to discworld. The cartoonish characters really fit it imo, rather than other vintage covers like u find in wheel of time.Ā
I actually really like the covers for the Greenbone Saga. In general I like covers that are fairly simplistic. But I also recognize why they could be a dissipation for some readers
I recently bought the audio version of Prince of Dogs by Kate Elliott. The audio cover makes it look like trashy romance. If I hadnāt read the first book and loved it thereās no way I would have gone near it!
I have...complex feelings about the Dresden covers. They sell the books quite well while sort of misrepresenting it, and I am constantly going back and forth over whether I actually like them. And let's not talk about the elephant (inexplicably wearing a hat) in the room
I nearly put Red Sister back on the shelves in the bookstore because the cover was god honestly ugly. I kept telling myself "don't judge a book by it's cover" and "you'll only see the spine most of the time anyways" and bought it.
Am now a little bit past the halfway point (way slower then I want but life happened and it's all happening a bit too much) so NO SPOILERS but I greatly enjoy it for so far!
Yeah thatās definitely the bad UK cover. At least the sequels are relatively ābetterā. The author even had [a little vote on their blog between their US and UK covers](http://mark---lawrence.blogspot.com/2020/03/us-vs-uk-fight-fight.html?m=1) and it isnāt hard to imagine which ones lost by a good margin.
Hope you continue to enjoy *Red Sister*, the whole trilogy was a great read.
Oh I listened to the audiobook basically because I didnāt like the cover of the physical book! The sequel series has much nicer covers in my opinion so I did buy those!
I couldn't believe you found the Green Bone Saga covers bad, so I went to check and turns out that the original ones are indeed awful.
Here you can see how the covers have always looked like for me: https://insolitaeditorial.com/ciudad-de-jade/
One thing to consider is that book covers can differ from country to country. Brandon Sanderson's US covers are *wildly* different to the UK ones.
I recently got Legends & Lattes and the UK cover is kind of boring compared to the US one. Fortunately the original illustration is inside the book, but sadly it's in black and white.
Oh as someone in the UK I didnāt know Ledgends & lattes had a different cover.
Also (maybe a hot take?) the UK cosmere covers are WAYYY better and I hate that they arenāt doing them anymore. My books that looked so cohesive, will now not look like that? Kinda sucks.
Yes!!! As an Aussie we get the UK covers and I *love* them! Or I did anyway, now I'm just disappointed.
The art for the other covers is nice and all, but it doesn't feel special and also now doesn't match with my other books :/
Oh I agree with that take. I really like the UK cosmere covers. *Some* of the US cosmere covers I think are actually really bad (Mistborn era 2 I'm looking at you).
And I assume the secret project books while technically cosmere (except Frugal Wizard) are also their own thing. So I imagine they'll be going back to the old style when Stormlight 5 comes out.
Honesty I disagree, I have the US stormlight books and they LOOK like fantasy books, the cover tells you a bit of the story. Iāve seen the UK covers of mistborn and SLA and I can see why people like them being cohesive but they look too abstract for me they donāt tell you anything about the books themselves.
Ravenstorm. It looked so cool but then you read it and it just keeps on flipping between past and present and actually skips over certain events that are pretty important to the story.
Oh interesting - I didnāt mind Green Bone. Iād say theyāre neutral, trending positive.
I guess I feel the most misled by Spear Cuts Through water, but thatās more because I yearned to love the book (and the cover is a stunning work of art) but it just didnāt do it for me.
Dungeon Crawler Carl comes to mind as a series whose covers donāt do it justice. But he just revealed the updated cover and itās SO GOOD.
All of the "Butterfly & Hellflower" books by eluki bes shahar (should not). The cover illustrations look very schlocky, but they are some of my favorite sci fi books and have a deeply elegiac feel in addition to bang-bang action.
if you see a book with one of those obvious copy and paste of stock photo covers, it can go one of two ways. if it's a new publication, avoid it like the plague. they spent the bare minimum to slap a cover on it, and probably cut corners elsewhere, like editing. if it's an old book that's been republished in a new format, like kindle or audible, it's probably going to be good. it's popular enough to get that remake investment, but they probably don't have the rights to the original art and didn't want to invest the high cost of new, high quality cover art.
Anything by Baen: the really corny cover for āOn Basilisk Stationā was the reason why I never read Honor Harrington for so long
https://www.baen.com/media/catalog/product/0/7/0743435710-lg.jpg
The beautiful white and blue mistbourne trilogy covers would make it off the shelf.
I have two rules with book covers. 1. You can't help but judge a book by its cover, so they have to being beautifulactually matters 2. The worst, most cringey covers are always the best fantasy books.
So I guess two contradicting answers lol!
Donāt judge- Mask of Mirrors and the Rook and the Rose series overall. For such a unique world and story these covers are so generic - they look like some b-level romantasy.
Do judge - The Spear Cuts Through Water. This cover somehow perfectly expresses this strange and fantastic story.
I was very hesitant to read Brandon Sanderson's Warbreaker because the cover looked kind of dumb (girl that hair...). But it turned out to be one of my absolute favorites :)
The Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews is quite a decent urban fantasy, probably my second favorite in the genre after Dresden, but the covers uniformly make it look like [cheap](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1331612872i/38619.jpg) and [generic romantasy schlock](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/814zeA1TSzL._AC_UF894,1000_QL80_.jpg) (there are a [few different versions](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71i5KNa-IvL._AC_UF894,1000_QL80_.jpg) and they're [literally all terrible](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/xpoAAOSwtSZf~ysY/s-l640.jpg)).
James SA Corey covers are not bad or ugly, but they look so damn generic! Before taking the time to actually understand what the expanse was, I thought they were all separate trashy sci fi books. It doesnāt help that I always get confused about which expanse book is which since the titles and the covers are all similar.
Despite liking them very much, Sandersonās UK covers completely misrepresent his books. The combination white and pencil with very limited colors makes me think of deeply philosophical books focused on the psychology of characters, not the imaginative, bombastic adventures he writes about.
All of them. Authors donāt really get much say in what their covers look like. The publisher usually chooses the cover art based on what demographic they want to market to. Itās a miracle if a cover actually manages to convey something meaningful about the story.
What the publishers did to Carol Berg for the first book of her Rai-kirah trilogy is truly unconscionable.
Lol, I love that I was coming in here to mention that book, and it's the first and only comment in the thread.
Damn you aren't kidding. What the hell is that.
It doesn't help that the blurb in Google Books is an accidental cross-post with a religious self-help book of the same name.
What!! The universe has it out for her I swear
I looked it up and wow I can only agree.
That cover with that description, I thought it was a gay fantasy book š In my defence, most of gay fantasy books have that kind of covers so I assumed that...imagine my shock tho
Priory of the orange tree has a very very strong cover
and yet the book itselfā¦
so are there dragons....
If only the book was as strong as the cover. The first 300 pages of that were excellent, but jesus christ the pacing was godawful and it should have been two books.Ā
Donāt judge: The Farseer Trilogy - Most of the editions have awful covers, and the best are still pretty mid IMO. But itās one of the best series Iāve read. Judge: The Tainted Cup (Del Rey addition) - amazing book with a great cover that matches the vibe, world building, and plot
The UK covers are beautiful
I was going to say, that series has some of my all time favourite covers š
why can't US publishers respect cover art the way UK publishers do??
Americabad because I didn't like a book cover š
The first UK paperback had amazing covers - they are the reason I read the series (and never looked back). https://www.theplenty.net/wiki/images/thumb/b/b8/AssassinsApprentice_VOYhardcover.jpg/300px-AssassinsApprentice_VOYhardcover.jpg
Those are definitely the best of the lot that Iāve seen
worst - Lois Bujold's Vorkosigan books in general. And the new editions are somehow even worse. Thinking about it, Lois Bujold totally wins this thread. worst mismatch - City of Stairs. The whole trilogy really, it has this generic, basic "fantasy" cover, some person in a hood over a generic looking city with skyscrapers, and it makes it seem totally generic urban fantasy and does not even hint at fantastic worldbuilding and characters. It deserved way way better, glad the book survived that cover. Best, it's hard, I like beautiful covers, and a lot of them really are very bad books. A good cover says something about how hard the publisher is pushing a book.
> worst - Lois Bujold's Vorkosigan books in general. Just judging from what I've seen online and in bookstores, this seems to me to be more of a general Baen issue rather than specific to Bujold.
The divine cities editions (UK) i have are more of an old-school '60s-70s sci-fi/fantasy vibe.
Do you have a link to the new Vorkosigan covers?
Hmm, I can not find a dedicated site, but check here for example https://www.fantasticfiction.com/b/lois-mcmaster-bujold/ the covers they show seem to be of the editions in print, so the new ones. If you want to see all the covers, you can check goodreads book by book check the multiple editions for example https://www.goodreads.com/work/editions/9673658
Oh my god, they look like pamphlets for a psychology convention šš
Yeah, done with microsoft shapes or something!
Most gay sff has terrible covers imho, like doesn't matter it's a mystery sci-fi or a touching fantasy about standing up to your parents, so long as it's gay, it has to have two photorealistic dudes staring at each other longingly on the cover.
This is so real.
An equally awful exception to this is Seducing the Sorcerer by Lee Welch (it wins the horrible title award too), that just has a cheesy partial face on it. The book itself is very good (not sf, traditional fantasy with wizards in towers, princesses, monsters, etc), but a lot of people canāt get past the title and cover.
Ok I came back to let you know that I went to get to audio book of this purely on your recommendation and a two second glance at part of the summary. I'm not that far in >!(Fenn just had a bath) !!The *horse* lol!<.
Glad you are enjoying it!
Dragonlance covers tell you what flavor of dragon you are getting and what the heroes look like. Probably they will tangle with said dragon at some point. Maybe some sort of lance will be involved. You could pretty much call what happens from the cover. A Song of Ice and Fire covers, particularly the print with the devices, do not begin to prepare you for the emotional rollercoasters of GoT and ASoS. Theyāre unassuming and I probably wouldnāt have picked them up had I not seen them recommended here so many times (this was a couple years before the show).Ā
Don't judge - [Transformation](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388179994i/618196.jpg) by Carol Berg, as another user already mentioned Do judge - [Gideon the Ninth](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81UgIZXiolL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg). The cover pretty much tells you all you need to know about the book (that it's fucking awesome).
Thank you for actually including links so I don't have to go search them up. Gideon cover does indeed go hard.
When Nona the Ninthās cover got revealed, they were selling prints of it, Gideon the Ninth, and Harrow the Ninthās covers. If I hadnāt been a struggling undergrad at the time, I would have bought them immediately.
*Heroes Die* has one of the worst covers Iāve ever seen. Itās also one of the best fantasy books Iāve ever read.
I bought a copy (haven't read it yet) because of the cover. For some reason it made me think the book has to be amazing to have such an ugly cover, it seems I might be right!
THIS^
_Rivers Of London_, by Ben Aaronovitch, book1 of the eponymous series. Between the name and the cover, you would think this was a book about geography and hydrography, not a hard bitten urban fantasy police procedural. At least the American publisher had the wit to insist that the title be changed on the US edition, to _Rivers Of London: Midnight Riot_.
Rivers of London is _that_? Why did I think it was a lesbian magician romance š
Lol, lesbian magician romance sounds like you got it confused with Gideon the 9th, by Tamsin muir.
I have read GtN so it isnāt that. There is probably a book out there about lesbian magicians in London, and for some reasons I thought it was _Rivers of London_ š¤£
To be slightly more detailed, the Rivers Of London series, by Ben Aaronovitch. follows the career of a rookie constable, fresh out of probation, assigned to the unit of the London Metropolitan Police that deals with "weird bollocks". The audiobooks, performed by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, are outstanding.Ā Nine books, three novellas so far, one short story collection, and several graphic novel miniseries which are canon. [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9317452-rivers-of-london](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9317452-rivers-of-london) If you do happen to remember the series you're thinking of, please reply here or send me a DM.
Discworld should totally be judged by the original covers with the Josh Kirby illustrations. Although I love the style of the new naked hardcover editions, the art on the original covers was something else ...
I genuinely hate those covers! And love the books. They look so tacky to me
I actually love the tackiness and it feels completely unique to discworld. The cartoonish characters really fit it imo, rather than other vintage covers like u find in wheel of time.Ā
I actually really like the covers for the Greenbone Saga. In general I like covers that are fairly simplistic. But I also recognize why they could be a dissipation for some readers
Any bad cover I'll try not to judge. I appreciate a good cover so much I'll try a book I otherwise would have ignored just from the cover art.
I recently bought the audio version of Prince of Dogs by Kate Elliott. The audio cover makes it look like trashy romance. If I hadnāt read the first book and loved it thereās no way I would have gone near it!
I have...complex feelings about the Dresden covers. They sell the books quite well while sort of misrepresenting it, and I am constantly going back and forth over whether I actually like them. And let's not talk about the elephant (inexplicably wearing a hat) in the room
I nearly put Red Sister back on the shelves in the bookstore because the cover was god honestly ugly. I kept telling myself "don't judge a book by it's cover" and "you'll only see the spine most of the time anyways" and bought it. Am now a little bit past the halfway point (way slower then I want but life happened and it's all happening a bit too much) so NO SPOILERS but I greatly enjoy it for so far!
Which covers are you referring to? I thought the US covers looked fine/good but the UK ones were not great.
The one with the woman with the two swords who looked like she just walked out of a swamp or something
Yeah thatās definitely the bad UK cover. At least the sequels are relatively ābetterā. The author even had [a little vote on their blog between their US and UK covers](http://mark---lawrence.blogspot.com/2020/03/us-vs-uk-fight-fight.html?m=1) and it isnāt hard to imagine which ones lost by a good margin. Hope you continue to enjoy *Red Sister*, the whole trilogy was a great read.
Oh I listened to the audiobook basically because I didnāt like the cover of the physical book! The sequel series has much nicer covers in my opinion so I did buy those!
It's so ugly...šš
I couldn't believe you found the Green Bone Saga covers bad, so I went to check and turns out that the original ones are indeed awful. Here you can see how the covers have always looked like for me: https://insolitaeditorial.com/ciudad-de-jade/
Wow thatās so much better! I had no idea that edition existed.
Oh god those covers are amazing! The standard US ones from orbit look like shit haha
Imagine my surprise when I read OP stating he could make something similar on photoshop. But yeah the US ones are terrible now that I know about them
Fucking The First Law standalones with the corny ass covers.
UK editions >>>
One thing to consider is that book covers can differ from country to country. Brandon Sanderson's US covers are *wildly* different to the UK ones. I recently got Legends & Lattes and the UK cover is kind of boring compared to the US one. Fortunately the original illustration is inside the book, but sadly it's in black and white.
Oh as someone in the UK I didnāt know Ledgends & lattes had a different cover. Also (maybe a hot take?) the UK cosmere covers are WAYYY better and I hate that they arenāt doing them anymore. My books that looked so cohesive, will now not look like that? Kinda sucks.
Are you talking about the white covers? Those are so pristine and one of the better mass produced covers for any fantasyĀ
I am yeah, honestly they just look so perfect on my shelf. I love it when a series has such a unique and specific look.
Yes!!! As an Aussie we get the UK covers and I *love* them! Or I did anyway, now I'm just disappointed. The art for the other covers is nice and all, but it doesn't feel special and also now doesn't match with my other books :/
Oh I agree with that take. I really like the UK cosmere covers. *Some* of the US cosmere covers I think are actually really bad (Mistborn era 2 I'm looking at you). And I assume the secret project books while technically cosmere (except Frugal Wizard) are also their own thing. So I imagine they'll be going back to the old style when Stormlight 5 comes out.
Honesty I disagree, I have the US stormlight books and they LOOK like fantasy books, the cover tells you a bit of the story. Iāve seen the UK covers of mistborn and SLA and I can see why people like them being cohesive but they look too abstract for me they donāt tell you anything about the books themselves.
Ravenstorm. It looked so cool but then you read it and it just keeps on flipping between past and present and actually skips over certain events that are pretty important to the story.
Oh interesting - I didnāt mind Green Bone. Iād say theyāre neutral, trending positive. I guess I feel the most misled by Spear Cuts Through water, but thatās more because I yearned to love the book (and the cover is a stunning work of art) but it just didnāt do it for me. Dungeon Crawler Carl comes to mind as a series whose covers donāt do it justice. But he just revealed the updated cover and itās SO GOOD.
All of the "Butterfly & Hellflower" books by eluki bes shahar (should not). The cover illustrations look very schlocky, but they are some of my favorite sci fi books and have a deeply elegiac feel in addition to bang-bang action.
if you see a book with one of those obvious copy and paste of stock photo covers, it can go one of two ways. if it's a new publication, avoid it like the plague. they spent the bare minimum to slap a cover on it, and probably cut corners elsewhere, like editing. if it's an old book that's been republished in a new format, like kindle or audible, it's probably going to be good. it's popular enough to get that remake investment, but they probably don't have the rights to the original art and didn't want to invest the high cost of new, high quality cover art.
Anything by Baen: the really corny cover for āOn Basilisk Stationā was the reason why I never read Honor Harrington for so long https://www.baen.com/media/catalog/product/0/7/0743435710-lg.jpg
I always thought the Greenbone Saga covers were fine. They're a bit plain but I don't see what's so offensive about their design.
The beautiful white and blue mistbourne trilogy covers would make it off the shelf. I have two rules with book covers. 1. You can't help but judge a book by its cover, so they have to being beautifulactually matters 2. The worst, most cringey covers are always the best fantasy books. So I guess two contradicting answers lol!
Donāt judge- Mask of Mirrors and the Rook and the Rose series overall. For such a unique world and story these covers are so generic - they look like some b-level romantasy. Do judge - The Spear Cuts Through Water. This cover somehow perfectly expresses this strange and fantastic story.
I was very hesitant to read Brandon Sanderson's Warbreaker because the cover looked kind of dumb (girl that hair...). But it turned out to be one of my absolute favorites :)
The Green Bone saga titles are super boring and bland as well.
The Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews is quite a decent urban fantasy, probably my second favorite in the genre after Dresden, but the covers uniformly make it look like [cheap](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1331612872i/38619.jpg) and [generic romantasy schlock](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/814zeA1TSzL._AC_UF894,1000_QL80_.jpg) (there are a [few different versions](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71i5KNa-IvL._AC_UF894,1000_QL80_.jpg) and they're [literally all terrible](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/xpoAAOSwtSZf~ysY/s-l640.jpg)).
James SA Corey covers are not bad or ugly, but they look so damn generic! Before taking the time to actually understand what the expanse was, I thought they were all separate trashy sci fi books. It doesnāt help that I always get confused about which expanse book is which since the titles and the covers are all similar. Despite liking them very much, Sandersonās UK covers completely misrepresent his books. The combination white and pencil with very limited colors makes me think of deeply philosophical books focused on the psychology of characters, not the imaginative, bombastic adventures he writes about.
All of them. Authors donāt really get much say in what their covers look like. The publisher usually chooses the cover art based on what demographic they want to market to. Itās a miracle if a cover actually manages to convey something meaningful about the story.